Occupations and attitudes of former student activists 10 years later

Respondents in a 1969 survey (N=400)of undergraduate men at the University of Michigan were resurveyed as alumni in 1979 (N=215).Of the 400 surveyed in 1969, 50 were active in political organizations ("organization activists") and 57 had been in demonstrations. These were rank- and-file student activists in the 1960s, not leaders. The demonstration activists were the more extreme in attitudes in both 1969 and 1979. In 1979 the demonstration activists were still more interested in political affairs than the nonactivists, more suspicious of free enterprise ideology, more opposed to current fears of communism, and more alienated from the military. Former organization activists were disproportionately employed in the human services areas of government, disproportionately absent from the business sector. In 1979 the former activists were no longer critical of the universities or of American society as a producer of poverty. They had shifted their main involvement from national to community affairs. While still distinctive in some attitudes, they were generally less radical than earlier.